In 1932, Paulina Peavy (1901 – 1999) attended a séance at the home of Ida L. Ewing in Santa Ana, California, where she claims to have met a UFO named Lacamo, a spirit from another world. From that moment forward Peavy, a university-trained artist, painted with a brush that “moved on its own.” In order to better channel Lacamo’s energies, Peavy also constructed and wore masks when she painted, occasionally signing her works with Lacamo’s name alongside her own.
Peavy’s entire life was dedicated to promoting her worldview and various philosophies through drawing, painting, sculpture, text, and film. Her works on paper depict the artist’s individualized visual cosmos using shapes that resemble energy beams, solar systems, and procreative organic shapes signifying genitalia, ova, fallopian tubes, sperm, and fetuses. Peavy’s life and work were constantly evolving to reflect her belief in mankind’s evolution to an androgynous one-sex through contact with aliens.
Laura Whitcomb who is interviewed here about Paulina Peavy, is a surrealist scholar who focusses on the surrealism’s impact on the West Coast. She has worked at the Gala – Salvador Dalí Foundation at the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres, Spain while also contributing essays for exhibitions Dalí Museum Florida.
After a curatorial residency at the Lucid Art Foundation she worked as an archivist for the second generation surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford contributing an essay for the Sonoma Valley Museum’s exhibition on the S.S. Vallejo ferryboat where Surrealists and Beat era artists notably which was followed by her curated show Warner Jepson: Indeterminate Convergences at the Center for the Arts Eagle Rock which presented Wallace Berman, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Conner and others. In 2019, Whitcomb organized and was the curatorial director for the retrospective of the San Francisco Dilexi Gallery which took place at six galleries across Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In 2022 she curated Luminaries of Light and Space at LAX Airport produced by Dublab which included these artists along with Robert Irwin, De Wain Valentine, Fred Eversley, Hap Tivey and Gisela Colon. Whitcomb witnessed Scharf’s work in the 1980s and in the early 90’s Whitcomb was the designer and director of Label which collaborated with the Keith Haring Estate. In 2010 Label became Label Curatorial which develops exhibitions and catalogs that highlight diverse medias in the arts converging focusing on showcasing its exhibitions in historic landmarks to draw attention to their preservation.
